Posted tagged ‘WWII’

As every good Canadian knows, there’s three important ingredients necessary for retaining citizenship in the Great White North:

1) A love for ice hockey
2) A love for snow
3) A love for Tim Horton & his coffee
4) A love for the Tragically Hip

Okay, so that’s 4, but as you notice, math isn’t on the list. And that last ingredient, a love for Gord Downie and the gang in the Tragically Hip, may be what really separates us from our freedom loving friends south of the CAN/AM border. Cause I’ve been there before, and there’s lots of people there that like coffee, snow, and hockey, but have never heard of the song “New Orleans is Sinking” – and New Orleans is in America, for pete’s sake!

Important Historical Sources

So I thought that in light of this, if I were ever to teach a course on Canadian history, the best and most accessible way to do it would be in Tragically Hip song form.

You know, you’re right to say that Sam Phillips sure recorded a lot of good black and white artists down in Memphis in the 1950s.

The Fantastic Four

BUT – how the heck did he do it? What happened to musicians having to go to major music industry centres like Los Angeles or New York to get a start on their recording careers? For example, didn’t Ray Charles have to leave Seattle in just 1950 for California to get going on what would eventually culminate in Jamie Foxx getting famous and Kayne West shamelessly ripping him off?

The thing of it was, there were big changes to recording technology following World War II. And when an innovator like Sam Phillips came along to seize on untapped talent that was the Memphis region’s musicians, well, the rest is history.